Time: 98 Minutes
Age Rating: M – contains offensive language
Cast:
Denzel Washington as Frank Barnes
Chris Pine as Will Colson
Rosario Dawson as Connie Hooper
Director: Tony Scott

An unmanned, half-mile-long freight train hurtles towards a town at breakneck speed. An engineer and a young conductor, who happen to be on the same route, must race against time to try and stop it.

Unstoppable is a train focussed action movie from Tony Scott and would be his last film before his death. It’s not one of Scott’s best movies but it is still quite good.

The plot is pretty simple with it being about a train that won’t stop and train workers try to stop it before it causes massive damage. It’s based on true evens and you can probably figure out how it’ll end, though that’s not really a bit problem. It’s very well constructed and has a pretty tight script. It takes a little while to start, but once the train gets loose and begins speeding off, the movie really takes off and doesn’t let up till the end. The high stakes are clearly conveyed, and help to keep you invested. Helping that is the drama and development with the main two characters, which gets you invested in the story, you even get to learn a lot about them in just the first 5 minutes. It’s energetic and paced well through its 98 minute runtime, with a lot of tension and suspense.

Denzel Washington and Chris Pine are great, fitting their roles quite well. Their characters’ progressions and backstories are pretty familiar, but both actors help to sell it, especially with the convincing chemistry. Other actors like Rosario Dawson play their roles well too.

The most striking aspect of the movie however is of course Tony Scott’s direction, delivering his trademark hyperactive style to this movie, especially with the camera zooms, breakneck camerawork and quick cutting. Scott is more than familiar with action at this point, so unsurprisingly the action set pieces are well crafted, tense and fantastic, and manage to feel somewhat grounded. The final act is especially intense, and has a satisfying end.

Unstoppable is a highly energetic, stylised and tense thriller, with a good script, great performances, and has solid direction from Tony Scott.